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YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."
I don't see why the fact that this misinformation is on youtube is a big deal. It probably just reflects actual public perceptions of science. Educate people, don't act shocked when uneducated people say stupid things.
Currently hooked on AMP
I'm not one to support eugenics, but... this might be nature's way of working out its own kinks.
Who is stupid enough to go to Youtube for authoritative information about anything? I mean, I get why people might use something like Wikipedia for this (with all the pitfalls that can bring), but this just plain does not make sense to me.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
We have to remember there is a large sub-culture in the US/Canada and Europe who still think that evolution is a myth, and the world was created 6,000 years ago.
They make YouTube videos as well.
Just because they can use tech doesn't mean they grok tech.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A study found mis-information... on.. the internet...? Where's the shocker here?
Slashdot is too nerdy for me.
You honestly have to wonder how people can make super-important decisions for their children and themselves using _YouTube_ as their main provider of information. It's sad, but it's just like all those folks getting burned on their million dollar homes with sub-primes - you made a bad decision because you didn't do enough research, and you should be the one paying the price.
You are simply never going to protect all the stupid people from themselves, and making the effort often only punishes the smart people who didn't make those mistakes. That's the unfortunate realization I've come to in my adulthood.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I can't help but think that it could only help the gene pool if the type of people who would think "hey, let's go look up important medical information on YouTube!" were given bad medical advice. Darwinism and all that.
(Except, of course, that this is more about misinformed parents harming their children. But still - I can't imagine why anyone would think "hey, I wanna find out more about immunization on YouTube!" I suppose they could be starting on a search engine and winding up at YouTube. But that ruins the joke.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Seriously.
Those people that go to YOUTUBE for HEALTH ADVICE?
Kind of like the age old:
Mr. Idiot has joined #IRC
Idiot: Hey guys, I hate this stuff 2 hours ago and my eyes are starting to turn green, any ideas?
IRC1: Go to a Dr.
IRC2: Go to a Dr.
IRC3: Go to a Dr.
IRC4: Call poison control THEN go to a Dr.
IRC5: Take pictures and post them for us!
Who does Mr. Idiot listen too? IRC5.
Let em die.
(no, I am not ACTUALLY suggesting eugenics by not educating these idiots, it is just tempting)
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
ON my medical application, I coined the new word "Google-gnosis" describing the problem with people self-diagnosing based on information found on the internet, making the point that Doctors are now going to have to make more of an effort to know what information and misinformation is out there, and how Doctors are going to have to spend more time teaching people correct information to dispel popular myths that get spread around. This is case in point for me. Maybe I should bring this up in my next interview...
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
..as evolution in action.
(see also "Darwin Awards")
-- Alastair
Of course, as we all know the medical/pharmaceutical industries will always play down risks associated with vaccines (which there are many, as is well documented).
I think this isn't so much proof of ignorance, but rather evidence that the "average" American actually has doubts about what we're being told and injected with.
And I can't blame anyone one bit for feeling that way.
If mainstream MDs and researchers care about getting their point of view out to patients, so that people who find out they have a disease don't have to learn about it from YouTube, spam, and pharmaceutical company sites, they're going to have to start using more Open Access journals or get their existing journals to go Open Access.
Someone has the nerve to complain about the scientific quality of information found on YouTube??? WTF All I can say is these people haven't been watching much of anything from Hollywood or from mainstream news media. Here, again, we have the opportunity to show that teaching and guidance are required for just about EVERYTHING in life, and that includes what to believe of what you hear/read/and see. Check your source, get a second opinion, buyer beware, you get what you pay for. Seems like all that crazy old s**T that grandpa used to say might have some truth to it? hmmm
I'm willing to bet that at least one of these concerned researchers went to a school where he was told that masturbation will make him crosseyed or make him go blind. Misinformation has been around since the advent of spoken language, and possibly before. It was only relatively recently that we all agreed (well most of us) that the earth is round.
It is not medical information that needs to be filterd, or the fscking Internet... we need to teach people how to get through life without falling prey to every scam and rumor that falls into their world. I remember recently the many people who recommended Chantix to me to help me stop smoking... Guess what Mr smart research scientists.. they were doctors and experts, and I had no reason to not believe them till people started having psychotic episodes and killing themselves.
Lets all just sing in 3 part harmony about the evils of not educating your kids, the public, your friends, and the world in general. The problem is not that there is misleading information out there, the problem is that people are so willing to be mislead.
While we are on subject... ehh, people who are willing to be mislead are also willing to believe that the government's "need" to encroach on their rights is necessary. An EDUCATED public is a strong one, but that is hardly what big business and big government want.
Educate people in general, not on just one little danger. Teach a man to fish..... nuff said
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Absolutely,
Especially when they continue to use mercury based preservatives in any vaccine, let alone one given to babies and small children. There have been studies that have shown the rise in autism directly linked to the rise in the use of mercury in vaccines in 3rd world countries. The reason why JAMA is technically right is because the pharmaceutical companies sure as hell aren't going to fund research that takes their product off the market.
While pharmaceutical companies do make life sustaining drugs, trusting a corporation to protect anything but its bottom line is fool hearty at best.
What makes these "researchers" think that people are coming to YouTube for medical advice? I'd bet that a lot (if not most) people are watching these videos for the absurd entertainment value they provide.
It's one thing to simply count hits. It's quite another to infer the reason(s) behind them.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I can't be sure of that, but I have an impression you somehow suggest these researchers blame youtube. It isn't so - or at least TFA doesn't say anything of the sort. Rather, they simply state the facts.
My interpretation of these facts is that the general public is uneducated, panicky and superstitious. And, more importantly, it has been like that all along. It was just that superstition and dubious reasoning never had a forum that powerful. And now, it is all for everybody to see and appreciate. The famous(?) SF author Lem is reputed to say: before the Internet, I had no idea how many idiots were out there.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
I'll spout some anecdotal evidence, though YMMV.
Being an old-timer, I can tell you that when I went to school all we had were polio vaccinations and tetanus. Out of a class of about 200 kids, 1 in 25 may have had bizarre allergies, (milk, grass, wheat, eggs etc.) Now it seems that most kids have some type of allergy or asthma, yet we live in such sterile times. It's not hard to conclude/perceive that something happened in the 70's and beyond. Was it in the vaccinations?
It's probably very easy for a lot of trepidation about vaccines because of past experience, anecdotal it may very-well be, however it does not help when polititians, school boards, professional organizations (AMA) AND big drugcos all gang up and require new vaccines mandatory as soon as the trial period is complete. I'm glad I don't have children in school (or children at all for that matter). I'd be leery too. (hope my tinfoil hat isn't showing)
Do you get the flu shot every year? That's a vaccine. Do you realize it's a crap-shoot as to whether -or- not it will even be effective against the "projected strain" the powers that be are pushing? I thought not.
No wonder a good portion of society distrust vaccines in general.
Now, get off my lawn.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Sadly, this will continue to happen for a lot of reasons, but mostly, like all conspiracy theories, it actually is comforting to believe that a shadowy world government is in charge. Or to think that the reason people are autistic, or get cancer, is because of vaccines. It lets people know that there are reasons for otherwise random events, events that could happen to them any day now, or to those they love. But if you can have something concrete to blame it on, instead of just the randomness and uncertainty of life, well, then you can get angry at whatever tangible entity you want.
And things like youtube are perfect for the type of disinfo that these theories represent. The question now is how do we counter these claims? I would highly suggest listening to the Skepticality podcast ( http://www.skepticality.com/p_listentopast.php )ablout the documentary Flock of Dodos. The main theme is a discussion about how real science needs to learn to present its information and findings in a far more entertaining and easily digestible format. Just throwing facts and numbers at people, while it makes me happy, turns off the majority.
This is kind of like the whole 9/11 truth issue. People who have seen the conspiracy videos on youtube can be almost immune to evidence about physics, metallurgy, demolitions, and such. Their eyes just glaze over when you try to use facts and numbers and evidence. But if you point them towards a source like http://www.youtube.com/user/RKOwens4 which is comprised of simple arguments against the 9/11 truth theories, in easy to understand 3 minute chapters, then you start to make headway.
This is the course science must take with the public. Like it or not. The alternative is far to dangerous.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
This weekend I had a chat with a fine gentleman who is one of the youngest polio survivors in the USA. He's in pretty good shape (he's in his 50s) but from visits with many others he knows what his future is like. Apparently, those who recover from polio do so by "swapping in" spare neurological paths -- the same ones that keep the rest of us functional as time takes its toll. Well, his "spares" are already used, so any additional losses as he ages are coming straight from function.
Measles? Look up the numbers. Case mortality for measles in the USA has been steady for over thirty years at 2/1000. In 1964, there were about 400,000 cases reported. Back when it was nearly universal, every state had well-filled schools for the deaf and blind -- most of them there thanks to neurological sequelae to measles, and which are still just as common as ever on a per-case basis. Those schools are empty now.
I have a smallpox vaccination scar on my arm, and wear it proudly. Most of you don't. You're welcome.
If you listen to the anti-vaccinationists, the vaccines are immeasurably worse than polio, measles, and smallpox. The best answer to that was stated by George Santayana. The rest is commentary; go and learn it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The popular website known as "Slashdot" is riddled with questionable legal advice.
Though it *is* the best place to find a poorly constructed car analogy.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
There are a lot of people (see above) that are just saying "Whoda thunk there's misinformation on the internet," but this is not the point of the article. The point is that misinformation is being ranked higher than videos showing the scientific truth. Now for entertainment sake, that's fine. In this case however, many of the videos were meant to be informative or persuasive instead of strictly entertainment.
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. I don't know of too many people who think their car will randomly transform into a robot or their body is being used as a battery to power a giant ai network. The problem the article is hinting at is many of these videos are supposed to be informative and we break into the realm of documentaries or informational movies (i.e. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc.) Now I don't want this debate to get political (although I think it may) but we'll further examine Fahrenheit 9/11. I personally am a democrat and when I saw this movie, I believed much more than I should of to be the absolute truth. Later on a fair portion of the movie was debunked, but because it was a compelling story in line with my own viewpoint, it was easy to believe.
To add to this, I have heard many people tell urban legends to me (which I knew to be untrue) as the absolute truth. The point is that humans tend to believe what makes a good story and not necessarily the truth, which in many cases is too bad.
I don't think it's unlikely or unheard of that there's misinformation on the net and I really don't feel that's what this article is getting at. Instead the article is pointing a blame-ful finger at the gullibility of human kind.
Sometimes lies may be fun, but take them only at face value.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
One of the real dangers about people not getting their children immunized is that it allows the virus to remain in the population and repeatedly exposes immunized individuals to live virus which increases the likelihood of a resistant strain developing. So not only are they endangering their own children, but everyone else as well.
You are part of the problem here. They shouldn't use mercury, agreed. But the link to autism has been shot down. The "study" that pushed that theory was a piece of crap and has been debunked. But it's still fun for people to believe because, hey, mercury is bad for you so it must be true when someone comes up with a plausible-sounding symptom of mercury-bearing vaccinations.
Keep it up. The world needs as much clueless misinformation as it can get. (Sarcasm.)
Unfortunately in this case (vaccines), depending of course on the disease, you'll wander around for a while as a carrier infecting others, some of whom a vaccine may not be sufficient protection for (in the case of for example Influenza, elderly or otherwise immunocompromised individuals). Such people may be able to tolerate one or two infections, but have their immune system exhausted and not be able to survive additional assaults. If the carrier had been immunized instead, their immune system might have been strong enough to keep them from ever being a carrier at all, saving the immunocompromised individual one of their "get out of death free" cards. Meanwhile the carrier feels sick for a few days, infects a few dozen people, recovers, and goes on to live their life like normal.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
When Jenny McCarthy goes on to Oprah, to the delight of millions of viewers, to say that "science" is wrong because "my son is the science" that proves vaccines cause autism ... I don't think YouTube is really a significant factor in this discussion.
Going back to the first quote, let's just say for sake of argument you're right, about being a single person in the population who does not get immunized. Let's just say at that point you run a higher risk of getting the disease from the vaccine than from another source.
How do you know when you're in that situation? How do you know, you're the ONE person, of all the people you may come in contact with, the one lone person who has system beat? (And of course that the only vector by which the disease will spread to you is through another unimmunized person.)
Oh, that's right, you don't. So you've set up some fantastical situation that will never occur, even if your conclusion is correct.
As for the chills and fever, the flu vaccine isn't a live virus vaccine. No infectious agents involved.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
can you point me to the original study, and the study debunking it? my problem with this mentality is that i don't know the truth about either side - when the average citizen cannot fully grasp the science behind the 'scientific reason', why should they be expected to trust it blindly? anecdotal evidence is just as convincing, if not more so. nobody here can prove to me that i should have a vaccination, and nobody here can prove to me that i shouldn't...but that doesn't mean both sides are wrong, or that either side can be right, for that matter. i've read that when they engineer the flu vaccination, they guess as to which strain is going to be most prevalent for the upcoming season, and if another one pops up, the vaccinations may as well be useless. where did i read that? beats me, but good luck proving or disproving it.
I can get investment advice from stock spam, legal advice from Slashdot, and now medical advice from YouTube... however did people manage to make major life decisions before the Internet?
Except that the rate of autism hasn't changed at all in countries like Japan where the use of Thimerosal has been banned since 1993.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7076/
Thanks for the comparison... I think we're all flattered to be considered livestock.
And no, I don't think governments in general always are interested in the health of their citizens. I believe the GGPP was talking about the Canadian government specifically, and I don't know much about that government. I do know that ours in the US seems all too eager to sell us all down the river for short-term commercial interests. I don't trust pharmaceutical companies developing immunizations more than I have to. I still believe in immunizing my kids, but I don't believe we should be doing it at the rate they're telling us to. And I don't believe that combining 3 or more immunizations into a single shot is always such a great idea.
I do think that immunizations are important, though.
And considering that most medical research is funded by grants issued by government agencies, yeah I think they're pretty well qualified to provide such advice.
Vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical discovery in human history. They have virtually eliminated the threat of polio, smallpox, mumps and measles. And what exactly would pharmaceutical companies have to gain from poisoning the population? There's no drug to treat autism and there are alternatives to mercury preserved (more expensive but if they were used the extra cost would just be passed on to the consumer).
If you really think all drug companies are evil you should atleast read up on River Blindness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverblindness This is a horrible parasite that once infected millions of people in affrica. Merck accidentally found a treatment for it, spent millions of dollars to get it certified and offered to sell it below cost to African governments. When the governments still couldn't afford it, Merck offered it for free, even going so far as to build infrustructure to make its administration possible.
I know it's only one example, and yes, they did get good PR for it, but to say that drug companies are all evil all the time is just plain ridiculous.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
I do. I guess that's because I'm smart enough to realize, as would be the "politicians", that we're not talking about your health, or my health, we're talking about PREVENTING A FUCKING PANDEMIC.
Not individual infections. Not a small outbreak. A worldwide, humanity crushing pandemic.
Let that sink into your tiny little brain for a second. Hopefully, you'll realize why your post is so ridiculous.
Forgive me for being so confrontational, but when your idiot ass decides to put me at risk because you're afraid of vaccines, you deserve to be called to task on it.
Wow. Who are these idiots looking for medial advice on YouTube? Before this article I would never even have considered it!
Next stop, MySpace for financial advice, and Slashdot for relationship advice. Ha!
Really, you get what you deserve people. Darwin awards for all of them.
Do you really think the JAMA or NEJM is the appropriate resource for medical information for your average consumer? They're not. What is in there isn't written for that audience, nor should it be.
I think this is a non-story. There are people who are suspicious of to downright hostile towards immunizations. Those people are probably not that bright. So where do people who are not that bright and wouldn't be taken seriously by any mainstream media go to air their 'information'? YouTube. Where do people who share their opinions go to get video of the opinions they want? YouTube.
There's a reason the videos with poor information are rated higher. And it's simple. It's because only the idiots who believe it are watching videos about immunization on YouTube and rating them. People who are not idiots are not watching these videos at all.
There have always been dumb people. The only difference between the 'old days' and now is we've made communicating easy enough that even dumb people can do it, so you're now more likely to run into a dumb opinion or bad information. But smart people can continue to do the same things they've always done: Ignore it.
paintball
I can see using YouTube for finding "don't taze me bro" or "Star Wars Kid" or any number of other entertaining or interesting bits of ephemera, but seriously, if you're getting your health information from YouTube, you need to be seeing a MENTAL HEALTH expert.
The Digital Sorceress
but please excuse me for being a bit skeptical of what the government thinks about medical advice... Does anyone honestly believe that politicians know what is best for our health? Or that they care one whit about what is in our best interest?
"The government" is not just politicians. In fact it is mostly not politicians, fortunately. It is made of career scientists, engineers, and medical doctors among others. Many of them know more about vaccines and studies involving vaccines than anyone else in the world (I personally know some of them). JAMA does not publish articles by pure politicians in general.
Not all concerns on vaccinations are invalid. We have to be careful not to fall prey to making "science & progress" a religion and deifying it.
1. Vaccines are a great thing and have saved millions of lives.
2. They have a great track record but not a perfect one. Overall they are well worth it for society.
3. Just because a study shows no signs of claimed issues does NOT mean such claims are invalid. Anyone having worked in a production environment is aware that some production batches are sub-par. QA is designed to catch most of these. But anyone that has bought a defective product knows it's never perfect. So a study merely shows that a good batch does not have harmful effects. It is very difficult for a "scientific study" to take into account the effects of those who have received vaccinations from sub-par batches of production.
4. Many claims of concern are circumspect, baseless and without merit. While others are more indeterminate. A few throughout history have after much criticism, denial, etc been shown to in fact pose risk.
5. Another valid concern is the tendency to apply too many vaccinations concurrently to a young child who's immune system is still in development. What affect does receiving three or even five or more vaccinations in a short period have on a very young child? Furthermore, the assumption all children will respond the same is not valid. And to some parents too great a risk. (ie: there has been evidence that some children have more difficulty metabolising certain agents than others - likewise, some may have more difficulty handling numerous strong immune responses simultaneously). Simply spreading out the vaccinations a bit might a wise thing to do.
But it can be far too easy to merely criticize such parents concerns on the basis of the dogmatic belief in science. Decrying them as heretics in what should be science and not a religion.
Most things humans do effect the entire society. By that rationalization, you could justify pretty much any government control over our lives.
People getting fat? Health care costs go up. Ban pizza. Mandate vegetable consumption.
Auto accidents? Ban private cars. Mandate public transportation use.
I've got two children, and I've had them both vaccinated. But lets not pretend that there are no dangers with vaccines. Our doctors were, to their credit, very upfront with us about that. You're essentially taking a chance, playing the numbers when you take a vaccine, as a percentage of people will always have adverse reactions. Those numbers of adverse reactions are statistically low, and your chances are pretty good, but I do have a friend whose daughter lost the use of her legs from a vaccination. It does happen. And as for the HPV vaccine, you can't call all those parents nutjobs when Gardisil has had some unexpected side-effects. And should a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease be mandatory anyway?
Non-vaccinated people are a danger to no one but themselves. If everyone else is vaccinated, they're safe. And far from under-vaccinating, the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that we may be over-vaccinating . Increasing disease resistance to drugs and immunizations is a far greater threat to the populace than any parent withholding a vaccine.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The people who are going to 'YouTube' for medical information ...
Are exactly the people who you want to not be vaccinated from deadly diseases.
This is a self-solving problem.
- Roach
I'm sure that's your excuse for all the troll and flamebait moderations you have received. Meta moderation is supposed to fix and prevent illegitimate down mods, and it seems to work for the most part. I have been modded down before for disagreeing with someone and later have popped up to a +4.
I wasn't talking about stuff being pushed down in my parent post, but I'm glad to discuss that as well. In my experience one down thumb on a DIGG post and it doesn't get viewed again, hence it never gets any more diggs. Same as your Slashdot theory which ignores meta moderation and the various ways of moderating a post. Also in my experience any amount of disagreement with a poster or the group thought and you get dugg down. There is no meeting of the minds where opposing views can have equal status, it's just, "I'm cooler than you. I gots more thummzz."
The whole thumbs up thumbs down thing just invites knee-jerk reactions. How often do you think someone thinks to themselves, "Man I disagree with that." and gives a thumb down vs, "Man I disagree with that, but there are some valid points and it was well thought out." and gives a thumbs up?
Don't get me wrong I don't hate Digg. As it's been said by others: I read Digg for the stories and slashdot for the comments. Although I have been visiting Digg less and less lately.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
I think a lot of it is the drug lobby. When I was a kid, you didn't get the hepatitis vaccine. I got mine on the way to college. Why? Because there was no need to get it. What are the odds of you getting hepatitis in this country? 1.5 per 100,000 and most of those are "high risk" people, because it's hard to catch without having sex with someone who has it, or using a dirty needle.
But now I've got my doctor telling me I have to get my infant kid vaccinated quick quick right now! He could get hep at any second!!! What a crock of crap. It's even less likely now than it was when I was a kid, because the infection rates are still dropping.
Likewise the chicken pox vaccine. The mortality from chicken pox is off the bottom of the chart, but none the less, unless I wanna home school my kid, I have to get them the shot.
I'm sure by next year, they're going to be calling for all infant girls to go ahead and get the hpv shot, because you can never be too careful about protecting your infant from STDs.
I think a lot of people are getting leery of having their kids turned into pincushions to meet an arbitrary timetable attached to low risk infections. I think it's 15 vaccinations before 1 year? Out of those, easily half could be pushed back a year or two or three (or 18 in the case or the 3 course goddamn hep vaccination), so why subject your kid to that kinda crap?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Researcher discovers that freely available material is misleading average people. And publishes his findings to a non-open-access journal where it cannot be read by average people.
*facepalm*
Stupid people say stupid things it is as simple as that. What we need to do is educate the young and hopefully they will be able to tell what their parents are saying is wrong. We don't teach any where near enough science in the states.
WTF?
I don't believe for a second that in any serious way "YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information". People simply don't go to YouTube looking for medical information... that's stupid.
A stupid premise is no less stupid simply because a researcher from the the University of Toronto says it.
The group does better when all of it's members are vaccinated. There might be individual cases where the vaccinations *might* be harmful to the individual.
It would be interesting to compare the rate at which individuals are being verifiably harmed by a vaccination versus the chance of catching the disease.
I have been vaccinating my kids but I'm trying to spread the shots out over time, making sure that there is no thimerosal being used and generally looking at alternative vaccination schedules (from places like Canada and Scandinavia).
It's one thing to engage in a behaviour that is self-destructive and yet another that can be group destructive.
"It was not the church but also the established astronomers of the time that condemned Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einsteins Special Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept anything in Quantum Theory after 1920 no matter how many experiments supported it. Edisons commitment to Direct Current electrical generators led him to insist Alternating Current generators were unsafe for years after their saftey had been proven to everyone else." - RAW "Prometheus Rising It's very hard for people involved in science to accept the reality that maybe a cherished theory could be wrong, just the same as with a Religious Fundamentalist, in fact the two have some strange similarities to one another when one delves into their so called "laws" or "truths". I find Science to be just as limiting as faith, slightly less insane but insane for reasons other than "faith". If one may be so compelled to believe only what one views in front of their eyes, data graphs, telescopes, microscopes, and various other instruments, then one has taken in a kind of faith in not just the the technology being used but other's eyes, or in the individual's case their own eyes. Just because you can't measure something or view it with your eyes doesn't mean it theoretically can't exist. A UFO or UMO(unidentified moving ground object) occur almost indefinitely on a regular basis, I'm sure all of you can be mistaken from time to time via your own perception of reality, does that mean that you didn't see what you thought you did? I don't know. How rare the sound of those three words in the mouths of a fairly egotistical religious or political or scientific person. We often embrace logo's, figures, organizations, heirarchy, beliefs, theories, specualtions, without much thought as to there actual probability of their actual existence in reality. Much of what passes for education in public schools amounts to commandments to respect your teacher, school, government, church, corporations and parents unflinchingly, and we are somehow shocked that people would say "no thanks" your all unworth my energy and time, leave me alone. Oh, but that means the person has a problem or is ignorant or something according to those that have to define everything in existence, catagorize, classify, compartmentalize and structure existence into something that can be understood in their own nervous system to be "reality". Sorry, I guess we offended your nervous system by not placing you above us in the heirarchy of power. Sometimes people use Science, Religion and Politics as a will to power(Nietsche), over others, sometimes others try to warn of this abuse of power and it's relation to your position or punishment in life(Foucault). The better observation would be to propose that maybe vaccines cause autism or maybe they don't, maybe mercury is toxic, maybe it's harmless, maybe some people have problems with Aids vaccines that increase propensity for acquiring HIV or maybe Bayer Asperin gave tablets with HIV to people in western Europe which caused many to lose jobs and go to jail while excutives that authorized the sale in the US suffer no consequences, maybe somebody that put forth the time to get a PHD in health could be on to something about vaccinations not being needed in such great quantity, maybe we should just create and inject vaccines into people focibly as in Prince Georges MD. Ivan Illich wrote a book called "Limits to medicine" many of you should try to find in your library and also another called "Deschooling Society". In some ways we now have a new Inquistion and it's aimed at the throat of challengers to the status quo, in the same way incumbents go after a challenger in politics, many vested interests play a part, and information may be censored through the use of extended copyright creating a "Intellectual Feudalism" as another writer put it so succintly, if not brought to the people's attention, we could very well have as we do today the technology to advance consciousness but yet sit at the feet of a "scientific oligarch" unwilling t
And so I'm waiting for the part where the medical profession realizes this, and then doctors/hospitals/etc start providing accurate information by qualified professionals on YouTube as a form of free advertising.
Stupid people lead the way on spreading FUD, but rational people follow when it garners enough attention.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So there is bad information on YouTube. So what? Only a fool depends on random heresy for important factual information. Are we to censor all information sources to protect fools? Are we to censor information sources to only those officially licensed to present the "proper" information? Tell the would be censors and busybody nannies exactly where to stuff it.
I know a mother who has 2 children. The first child got immunized, and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with autism. The second child was not immunized, and shortly after the time he would have been immunized, he was diagnosed with autism. She still insists that the first child's immunizations led to that child developing autism.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
- Cats playing piano ....yeah, clearly, that's where I'm going to find the best medical advice! And it's FREE!
- fart videos
- stuff crashing & people hurting themselves
- a study in the limitless narcissism of humanity
-Styopa
I get your point, which is that it is up to scientists to prove that the things we inject into our bodies are as safe as possible. And scientists and doctors take that responsibility very very seriously. There may indeed be as-yet-unknown negative side effects to vaccination, and scientists acknowledge that possibility and try their best to study and look for it. But so far, they have not found a connection to things like autism or asthma.
Maybe they will find problems in the future. But at worst that will create a tough question of trade off, because there is simply no question that the vaccines are very effective at fighting their respective diseases. If your child has a 0.0001% chance of developing a debilitating disease FROM a vaccine, or a 1% chance of dying from a different disease WITHOUT the vaccine, that is not such a clear-cut decision.
Consider this tradeoff:
a) We know for a fact that vaccines are extremely effective at preventing many nasty, often deadly diseases in children. Numerous studies have demonstrated clear evidence, as has our common experience with the dramatic decline of deaths due to diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, hepatitis, tetanus, etc.
vs.
b) Some people think some vaccines might be factors in the development of certain diseases, but numerous studies have failed to find a linkage--either it does not exist, or is such a weak connection that it is easily missed in the data.
Please vaccinate your children.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'm amazed at the stupidity of the responses, and the moderators moderating it down to -1. How could you not see that I was explaining WHY people don't want to get immunized? The selfish response is to not get immunized. YES, IT IS THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS, YOU DOPE.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist